


Alternative Cures

by championrolodexer



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Hicsqueak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-17 20:46:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16103486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/championrolodexer/pseuds/championrolodexer
Summary: In which HB takes the best care of her students (but no-one talks about it), it is Hard To Be A Hallow, and Pippa teaches HB some new words.





	1. The Curse

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt at this. Gentleness appreciated.

Sybil Hallow thinks she is cursed.

It takes a long time, many tears and muffled sobs for this to come out. Her explanation is not quite grammatical, because the girl is tired and her language is stuttering under the pressure of emotion she cannot control. She perches on the sofa, not exactly sure of Miss Hardbroom. Some fourth-year girls had found Sybil, early in this morning, crying in a corner of the library. (And silently, Miss Hardbroom commends them – not just for coaxing Sybil out of the corner and by turns persuading, by turns dragging, her to the teacher’s room – but also for the fact that they had diligently scheduled a study session before breakfast, in the dark morning hours of the winter. Compassion shown towards a young student is pleasing, but their scholarly organisation and resolve to improve their marks is also to be admired. Her critical commentary on their mock examination papers had obviously not been missed.)

Why they bring Sybil Hallow to Miss Hardbroom’s rooms is because Miss Cackle is away for the week (on business which it is no business of students to know). And for another reason. It is not widely known, but Miss Hardbroom can listen and can help. This fact is known only to those students who have turned up crying in her office when every other teacher has been unavailable. They have received from her a kind of firm compassion. Not a gushing understanding, a wish to magic and fix every ill and resolve every bit of unevenness in their lives, but the application of a soft scrutiny to their problems, a logical patching-up which has helped them sort it out, a bit.

Neither Miss Hardbroom nor the students who have received this treatment have much of a desire to blast this information round the school. They all have reputations and self-image to preserve. But among the students she has patched up is one of the fourth-form girls, who had sat with Miss Hardbroom for a little while after her brother died. The girl had wanted to run away, or die herself. Miss Hardbroom hadn’t offered wild promises that everything would be better, or tried to distract her with tea and sweet things. She had waited; allowed the girl to speak when she needed, and be silent when she did not. Had allowed her to be angry, and then taught her how to control that anger. The girl hasn’t forgotten this.

Sybil Hallow – so it comes out between sobs – thinks she is cursed, and all her sisters too. Which is why she was found in the library, where she had been all night, looking for a reversal spell or something to undo the curse which she couldn’t put a name to. But they must be cursed. Because how else could it be (she eventually lets it out, while Miss Hardbroom watches her, weighing and assessing and calibrating), that all three daughters could be so wrong? How else could they fall so short of the hallowed Hallow name? There is her, who is cowardly and clumsy and has no instinct for magic. There is Ethel, who is so smart, but so desperately unhappy. So unhappy that Sybil sits up at night wondering if all the unhappiness will make Ethel go bad. There is Esmerelda, and here she falls back into silence again, because she doesn’t need to explain why what happened to her oldest sister is obvious evidence of the curse’s reality.

And in between these words, which are a child’s words, Miss Hardbroom catches snatches of other people’s words – phrases like ‘the promise of our lineage’, and ‘dynastic reputation to uphold’. She can guess where they come from, and her guesses are rarely wrong. She thinks for a moment of the harm that adults do to children, but then applies her mind to the problem at hand.

 

*

When students are in distress, Miss Cackle always has some story to trot out for them. If a familiar goes missing, she will offer up the tale of how her own cat got lost for three days when she sent him out to search for ingredients for a potion, only for him to be discovered baked in a pie in the kitchens, but very much alive – and who jumped out, covered in sauce, and scared all the cooks. (Miss Hardbroom privately wonders about the logic of that story, suspects it is embellished for show, because even a witch’s familiar could probably not survive baking in an oven). Miss Cackle’s comforting stories are interspersed with offers of tea, and typically finish off with a stirring peroration. She knows the student in distress will do her very best, and be brave.

Miss Drill also has stories to offer for anyone who gets into a scrape or injures themselves during physical education. Once they’re up off the ground, she steadies them with anecdotes about how even the greatest flyers have doubted themselves or come to trouble. (Miss Hardbroom, again, wonders at this – if half of Miss Drill’s stories are accurate, these professional sportswitches and sportswizards have barely enough balance to sit on a broom. She says nothing, though, appreciating the effect the story has on the injured student, which usually does enough to distract them from their bruises. Would students be better served if more time in those lessons were allotted to basic principles of broom handling and broom calibration rather than stories after the fact? Perhaps. But she won’t have that argument with Miss Drill again; has a grudging respect for her, most of the time.)

Miss Hardbroom does not usually have stories to offer. This is unsurprising. She trained her familiar not to go missing. Her cat knows never to enter a working oven, never to get mistaken for an ingredient or rare furry delicacy. She mastered her schoolwork; the letters and numbers on her pages were never out of place; she never needed or asked for additional guidance on that score. A model student. Even without the regimented regime of study she adhered to, it came easily to her. All her academic life: she has fixed her mind on a thing, clicked her fingers, and understanding has flowed towards her.

On this occasion, however, she has a story of her own to offer. Out of – empathy? Solidarity?

When Sybil stops, and the silence softens, and she puts a hand – gingerly – on the student’s arm.

‘When I was your age, I also spent some time believing that I was under a curse.’

(What she doesn’t fill in, and Sybil is certainly not brave enough to ask about: portrait of the young Hecate Hardbroom, who could turn magic any way she pleased, but could not compel her desires to run the way they ought to. She could barely even turn her head away when a certain person would enter the room. Young Hecate Hardbroom who – shameful, shameful, shameful – could be undone by a pair of eyes and a soft smile. Those were the wrong kind of eyes, the wrong smile, set in what was very much the wrong face. No-one had needed to tell her directly that this was shameful; she knew, all the same, that something was not right about it. And that her soft and stupid feelings could not and should not be returned. She knew this at a deep and fundamental level. She was like a weathervane that was stuck the wrong way; she would have to turn herself around.

Young Hecate Hardbroom, after many attempts at fixes with charms and incantations which did nothing, changed nothing, discovered an alternative cure: to suppress it, to jam it all down, deep within her. And to monitor it with an exactitude, lest any part of it should ever bubble up and show itself. To be extremely careful with who and what she allowed herself.

She almost smiles as she reflects on the irony. She doubts whether she would have become half as good a witch had she not spent those many long nights in the library, scanning books far beyond the syllabus and far beyond the ordinary level, in search of something which would make her right. Whether all that time looking for a cure had in fact made her what she was, academically. While never changing her in the way she had wanted at all.)

‘And, like you, Sybil, I spent my time in the library trying to see how I might fix it. It took me a long time – too long, really – to realise that I was not. Not cursed. That the things I did not like about myself, things which I found difficult, were not things imposed on me from without, or things I could separate from myself. Not magically or otherwise. They were… parts of my self.

So, Sybil Hallow, I will tell you this. You are not under a curse. Yes, you are timid, but not supernaturally so. You are perhaps a little clumsy, but I have seen much worse. If you open your eyes at the breakfast table this morning you will undoubtedly see students who cannot even pour the milk onto their cornflakes without drenching the entire hall. And if you had no instinct for magic, you would not be here. Or’, (she adds, pausing and briefly shrugging on a more familiar and fearsome form), ‘do you doubt the efficacy of the admissions test which I myself administered?’

Sybil wisely shakes her head.

And then ventures. ‘But what about Ethel?’ Hecate sighs. ‘At Ethel’s age, many young girls are the way she is. Which does not make it any better for now, but in time it will pass. As her teachers, we will look to Ethel. Even though you are her sister, it is not something you can solve.’

(Sybil does not know the phrase ‘we must cultivate our own garden’, although Miss Hardbroom thinks it would be good to introduce her to the concept at some stage.)

‘Does that help?’

Sybil nods; Miss Hardbroom flicks her hand and conjures a glass of water for her to sip from. The child is dehydrated from crying, and the cold will help bring her around a bit.

‘Now I suggest that you go to breakfast, and remember that you belong here. And watch out for all those clumsy witches spilling things at the table.’ She squeezes Sybil’s arm, once, to indicate the conversation is over. Sybil rises.

‘And you will come again, if this continues to prey on your mind.’ It is half question, half instruction.

 

*

She goes to the mirror. It is early, still, but she knows the person she calls will answer (always answers), and in exactly the same way as she always has: pleasure dancing across her face, as if Hecate’s call were the only thing in the world to matter to her. Listening, even to her pointed complaints about the inadequacies of the school’s timetabling system and basic and shockingly negligent inaccuracies of certain supposedly gold-standard academic textbooks, listening with, yes, say it (she will say it)—love.

Hecate Hardbroom is training herself to say that word, first internally, then aloud. Training herself to use it in a context and a conversation where she thought it did not belong. It is much the hardest incantation she has ever had to learn.

Before she makes the call, she catches her reflection in the mirror. She appraises herself without vanity. A face which is older than it once was (whose face is not?), but the same in its angles and contours. She is exactly as she has always been. Which is to say: she is exactly the thing she feared being (feared becoming) all those many years ago. Which is also to say: she has not been cured.


	2. Defence Mechanisms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Botany is for lovers! And everyone else too. Botany is for everyone who's able to avoid getting their ear chewed off by an inadvertently flesh-eating plant.

She could quite happily have lived the rest of her life without being involved in another debacle involving the misuse of magic and Mildred Hubble’s hair. Could have lived lifetimes. Civilisations might have risen and fallen and Hecate Hardbroom would still have been perfectly content never to hear the words ‘hair’ ‘magic’ ‘accident’ and ‘Mildred Hubble’ lined up in the same sentence again.

Of course, she is not permitted that luxury. She was foolish to think she might be.

More or less, this is what has happened:

The third year had been given very specific and careful directions. Of course they had, and of course such instructions have made not one jot of difference to Mildred Hubble’s ability to create chaos from order. Two girls have been assigned to each plant. One student is to press shut the biting jaw of the plant while the other bends down to trim the edge of its leaf (just the edge, absolutely just the edge), to procure the fine cutting without which this potion cannot be made.

It is actually much less dangerous than it sounds, because the plant is not carnivorous. At most it will clamp onto a finger (painless, for it has no real teeth) until you tap at the root and its jaw releases. No harm done. It is really only a reflex, but the more frivolous students tend to panic, which is why you pair them up—for mutual reassurance.

A class that has in every other instance run smoothly, runs smoothly until they end up in a situation where one of Mildred Hubble’s long plaits is wedged fast in the plant’s jaw. And the plant is unforgiving. And, obviously, rather than ask for help, the girl spends ten minutes trying to disguise her predicament, making it worse and getting ever more stuck all the while.

When it comes out, and Miss Hardbroom looms over her bench, she offers up a catalogue of excuses:

  1. Enid was busy trying to find a treasured trinket lost somewhere in the depths of her schoolbag, so Mildred thought it was best just to get started by herself because they were already late for the lesson and so far behind everyone else.


  1. Mildred had forgotten the warning of the last lesson when Miss Hardbroom had specifically stated that whatever you do, you must not water this desert plant, because they have an extreme sensitivity to over-watering which sends their jaws into an immediate and aggressive spasm.


  1. She had also not heard the repetition of that warning at the start of this class, or had forgotten it, because she was distracted by the fact that her ‘cute’ plant looked ‘really thirsty’.


  1. When she first got trapped, she had not wanted to bother Miss Hardbroom and disrupt the lesson, and thought she could drag her hair out of the plant’s mouth. And so she had asked Enid to tip over a cauldron on the next bench as a distraction while she untangled herself.


  1. She hadn’t thought that the harder she pulled, the tighter the plant would grip. That did not make sense to her, because most things release when you pull on them. Except for knots and magical devices and oh…! Well, yes then.


  1. Nor had she realised that attempting to use magic to undo her predicament would only make the plant’s mouth more like a vice and less giving; she had forgotten the magical principle of counter-effects from their first-year theory lessons.


  1. No, she had not thought that…



But that was enough. Little point in logging the further excuses offered while Mildred’s hair is still entwined with the plant which seems to be (a phenomenon Miss Hardbroom has never encountered before) digesting. And now, of course, no work at all is being done in her classroom.

It’s not an immediate danger, but at this rate of slow but angry consumption it will be close to her ear in about three hours. ‘Please Miss Hardbroom, don’t let it eat my brain!’ screeches Mildred (foolish girl, entirely melodramatic), which produces a snicker from Ethel.

It’s entirely melodramatic because even if the plant continues to swallow her hair, it’s not a flesh-eating species. Even—most probably—with the enchantments Mildred has unwittingly placed on it in her panic. But it is also quite clear that magic will produce no results, and will only make the plant chomp faster.

‘Can’t we just chop the head off?’ suggests Enid, who then clarifies that she means the head of the plant, not the head of Mildred.

But Hecate Hardbroom is not willing to kill a plant over what is really only a defence mechanism. It is hardly the unfortunate plant’s fault that it should have been assigned to Mildred Hubble. Besides, it is rare, and expensive, and part of a batch which she has tended since they were seedlings.

She has three hours to think on it, anyway.

 

*

It is lunchtime. The plant is working away, slowly. Miss Hardbroom is also turning over the problem slowly, perhaps more slowly than she would like.

Mildred Hubble has been ordered to sit quietly in a corner of her office. (The staffroom was no use; Miss Drill couldn’t suppress her giggles, and really Miss Hardbroom doesn’t trust anyone else to keep an eye on her). She’s nosily consuming some toffees which Mr Rowan-Webb has given her, feeling very sorry for herself. Miss Hardbroom hopes she won’t think of the sweets as some sort of reward. The sound of Mildred salivating over the toffee is matched by the sound of the plant chewing over her hair.

She has looked up the plant in the gold-standard tome: Vespuchin’s _Cylopedia of Newly Discovered Magical Flora (vol. 1: Rare Desert Magics)_. She hadn’t needed to check; her memory of the entry was entirely right. There really is nothing else for it. She calls.

Pippa is about to burst into her customary greeting – certainly informal, and absolutely not appropriate for a student to hear.

Hecate fixes her with a look and gestures behind her to where Mildred is sitting, chewing and being chewed on. ‘Well met, Pippa’.

Pippa catches on, stops herself, pulls herself into a more formal style. ‘Well met, Hecate; Well met, Mildred.’

Hecate has resolved to keep this as short (and painless) as possible. ‘I am sorry to bother you during the school day—‘

‘And you know it’s _never_ any bother.’

And this is the tone, the dangerous tone, dangerous because she doesn’t want Mildred Hubble to see, or Mildred Hubble to speak of it with her friends, Mildred Hubble and all the rest of the school to chatter and smirk and laugh about it.

‘As you can see, Pippa, we have had a botanical mishap. The specimen in question is one of a variety discovered by Jago Vespuchin. There was a time when you knew him quite well. I think.’ She adds stiffly.

‘Who is he?’ Mildred pipes up. Hecate could silence her with a look, but instead says ‘if you would like to save that ear, Mildred Hubble, you would do well not to interrupt this conversation’.

But Pippa (ever indulgent of people who damage themselves through their own stupidity) explains. ‘Hello Mildred. Gosh, that looks rather painful! Dear Jago is an explorer, quite renowned for discovering obscure but powerful plants. Including the one which is nibbling on your head right now.’

(Hecate privately thinks it is ridiculous to award Jago Vespuchin the puffed-up title of “explorer” when all he really is is an adequate botanist with a good head of hair and an even better publicist. But she would admit that her view does not come from a fair and neutral appraisal of his achievements.)

Hecate continues. ‘I have never met him. But because of this unfortunate situation, this unfortunate Mildred Hubble-related situation, I was wondering whether you might contact him and prevail upon him to assist me. For old time’s sake.’

Back to the mirror. And Pippa’s response doesn’t seem—to Mildred at least—quite to answer the question which she’s been asked by Miss Hardbroom. ‘You followed that? It must have been a decade ago.’

Hecate tries to make her tone even, tries to make it clear that this is no reprimand. She has no right to reprimand. ‘I read the news. It came up, when I was reading other stories.’

(She’s not being untruthful there: the glamorous headmistress of Pentangle’s stepping out with the most wizard wizard. Jago Vespuchin, whom wizards wanted to be, and witches wanted to be with. Together they were the most fabulous couple of their generation. Their romance was covered by every paper, reputable and disreputable. Who could avoid the speculations about whether their eyes had met across the new garden plan for Pentangle's. Students were accosted by reporters and asked if they ever saw Mr Vespuchin at breakfast times in the hall. Would Miss Pentangle tame the bad boy of botany, encourage him to settle down and teach classes at the school? Had they already married in secret, in the desert, during one of his latest death-defying trips? Or, in the less respectable parts of the magic press: which bits of her has the great explorer got around to exploring so far?

It made Hecate’s stomach turn. But of course, she couldn’t stop reading. It was a kind of compulsion, maybe (she will concede) a form of self-punishment. She forced herself to read through every story, in order to demonstrate to herself how absolutely good Pippa Pentangle’s life could be now she was out of it. And if she thought him flashy and brash and not good enough on any level for Pippa, then that was only an indication of how little she had ever really understood Pippa, or understood what Pippa wanted or needed.)

Hecate winces as she thinks of it. And here Pippa moves closer to the mirror, and speaks lower, ‘you understand what that was, though, don’t you?’

And Hecate raises a hand (demonstrative, apologetic, but also remembering that Mildred Hubble is the corner of the room). ‘I know that I had no…claim on you. No right to anything.’ She tries to make it clear that there’s no accusation. Only fault on her part.

Pippa waits.

‘And—not that I read the stories—but you did seem very happy together. From the photographs.’

Pippa still waits.

‘If you are in contact, his expertise might be helpful. Within the next 90 minutes, ideally.’

Mildred, who has obviously been listening, even if she doesn’t fully understand the dance taking place in front of her, can’t stop herself from bursting out, ‘if your old boyfriend could help me Miss Pentangle…please. My head is feeling really sore now, and out of my two ears, this one is my favourite.’ It is a little pitiable.

Pippa cracks, and can't help but smile at the two creatures sitting before her, each ridiculous and each endearing in their own way.

‘We could call Jago, of course. I’m sure he’d be quite interested to see this. But I don’t think we need bother him.’

‘No?’

‘Hecate, for all your magical brilliance, you do so often overlook the mundane solution. All you need to do is cover Mildred’s hair with soap. Ideally a kitchen detergent, non-magical. Lather up the whole head. And then the plant will simply—’

‘Vomit me back up!’ exclaims Mildred, who is not just pleased to be getting her head back, but also at the story she will have to tell her mum.

‘I was going to say detach itself, but, yes, Mildred, that’s essentially the process.’

‘And you’re sure, Pippa, that this treatment will work?’

‘It is not a prescribed solution, but—let’s just say that I have seen this before. Every school has its Mildred Hubble. You should come and meet mine sometime.’ She winks, and addresses herself to Mildred. ‘Mildred, why don’t you run off and find some soap. Miss Hardbroom will follow you in a moment to oversee the procedure, but I need to speak to her first. And be sure to wash out the plant’s mouth afterward. We don’t want to poison the poor thing, because they’re very hard to grow and I’m sure Miss Hardbroom has spent a lot of time and care on it. Soft thing that she is.’

‘You’re the bats, Miss Pentangle!’ Mildred is now smiling from ear to ear, or from ear to plant attached to the side of her face. She runs out—even more ungainly than usual with a plant and plantpot stuck tight to her head—and (of course) slams the door behind her. Hecate will have to follow her quickly; in this state Mildred is likely to mistake a jar of mayonnaise for soap.

But there is a small matter, waiting for her in the mirror.

‘Hecate. We were just friends, you know. Jago and I. It was never anything more than that.’

‘You don’t need to say this in the service of making me feel better. I cut myself out of your life. You were entitled to be happy. It was 30 years. It was my fault. And I wanted you to be happy. I was glad he seemed to do the job.’ (She’s aware that this is all sounding very clipped. But it is not untrue. She was of course jealous of him, writhing with it, sick with it, but never resentful of Pippa for being happy.)

‘I was still yours. All that time.’

Hecate looks unconvinced.

‘Oh Hecate. I’m sure Jago won’t mind me telling you this, given how often I spoke of you to him, and given the extremely helpful service we performed for each other. Jago, you see… holds his wand in the other hand. Flies widdershins. Drinks his potions from a different flask?’ She’s really not sure how many more of these she can come up with. Gives up. ‘He’s like us.’

An eyebrow raised, but at which part of that, Pippa isn’t sure.

‘Let’s just say there was a certain advantage in Jago and me appearing together very prominently at certain events. He had a public to consider. And I much preferred the question of “When will you two lovebirds be getting married?” to “Who is it that has you looking so lovelorn?” or “Are you expecting to be alone and miserable forever?”. A nice sunny lie was so much easier than the truth, for both of us.’

Hecate looks abashed. ‘In the papers—you seemed…I assumed…’

‘Jago is fun. We enjoy each other’s company. But do you think I could be happy with anyone else?’

‘No?’ And it comes out as a question.

‘I wish you were more certain of that answer. Come over later. When you're done giving Mildred Hubble a head massage.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Magical euphemisms are my jam!


	3. Art Restoration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's all just look at the floor and try not to acknowledge our feelings.

‘I need you to keep still’, Pippa tells her, sternly. ‘For the next five minutes, Hecate, no fidgeting please.’

‘I do not fidget. Even if I did, it is a _magic_ paintbrush. I think it will cope.’

Hecate Hardbroom does not fidget. It is a habit she despises in students, takes pains to teach out of them. First and foremost, this is for purely practical reasons: the fidgeting hand reaches for the wrong ingredient, stirs the cauldron one too many times; or, in the particular case of Mildred Hubble, knocks several incompatible ingredients off the table, forming a messy (and acidic) soup which begins to dissolve the floor of her classroom. A floor which has survived student spilling and scholastic incompetence for nearly a millennium, but will not stand strong against the consequences of Mildred Hubble’s fidgeting. No, what you might from afar mistake for fidgeting in Hecate Hardbroom is in fact a kind of constant self-monitoring. It is not an unconscious habit, but the product of training. Her hands are constantly working, either at magic, or at ensuring that everything is in line, in order, as it should be. That the chain around her neck hangs straight; that her sleeves are smooth. That a witch is presenting the image she ought to the world.

‘The paintbrush can cope, of course. But an unsettled subject makes for an unsettled painting! There are fine details which I want it to capture, and it’s just about to get started on your eyes.’

Hecate suddenly feels the strongest urge to blink. Fights it.

‘Next you’ll be asking me to smile and to take my hair down.’

‘Only if you insist, darling.’ Pippa smiles sweetly at her. ‘However you would like to look on my wall. I shall just be happy to have you up there.’

‘It would be scarcely less painful to have me pinned up there.’

‘Is that really an idea you want to put into my head?’

Hecate pauses, and then decides she is not brave enough to ask the question she has wanted to ask. Dreads the answer. Instead she asks, ‘what do you want this portrait for, anyway?’. It’s adjacent to the question she wants to ask.

Pippa looks at her, still loving, still teasing. And perhaps she is also avoiding the question lurking behind that question.

‘Because there is a large space over the fireplace in my office, since you forced me to take down the painting which you describe as “an affront to the history of witch-made art”. So you have, my darling, brought this on yourself.’

‘You’re being deliberately obtuse. I mean me, here, in black, looking–looking like me.’ Hecate gestures around the room, rather helplessly (she is almost kittenish, Pippa thinks). ‘It will hardly suit. It will hardly give the right _impression_.’

The office is big and light and open; a whole wall of it has been enchanted so the brick and mortar can become transparent. Pippa can, if she wishes, tap the right stone and see out across the gardens of the school. (Hecate approves, reasoning that it gives Pippa the opportunity to keep an eye on what wayward students might be up to, especially in the long summer evenings when young people run the wildest.) Now, when it is spring, it is almost impossible to tell whether the birdsong is coming from within or without the walls.

Hecate Hardbroom knows what she is. She is stern, and her face is what some people charitably call striking (a euphemism for domineering, forbidding). Her profile suits an austere place, and this is not it. A painting of her would sit well on a wall of ancient Hardbroom ancestors, who were unsmiling, unstinting, long-lived witches and wizards and long holders of grudges. The kind of pictures which shouldn't have too much exposure to light.

‘It will suit me very well. In fact, it will vastly improve my view.’

Hecate looks doubtful. ‘Some people would find it… off-putting.’

‘But it is my office, and I won’t. This way I will have you in this room even when you’re not in this room. Even when you’re prowling the corridors of Cackle’s and sentencing students to write out 500 lines for having mismatched shoelaces.’

Hecate could object that she does not prowl or that that is not actually the punishment she would prescribe for an infringement of the dress code, or indeed, that the dress code serves a useful purpose as a guard against vanity and as social leveller. Instead she is still for a moment. She steels herself to ask the question.

‘And what will you say when you invite people into the office? Parents of prospective students, for example. And they see me on your wall?’

And suddenly she is wondering why she agreed to this. After all, her last experience with a painting had been disastrous. And it’s only a small mercy that Pippa chose to enchant a paintbrush to do this and didn’t commission Mildred Hubble to make the painting. On one level, she knows why she agreed to it, of course: because when Pippa asks her for something, she is constitutionally incapable of denying it. And for all the harm she has inflicted, she ought to make herself more pliable, giving. And yet, all the same, she worries. Has Pippa entirely thought through the consequences of her affection; can she really want such a portrait on her wall? When the great and the good, and the august donors to Pentangle’s congregate in this office to discuss how much they will give and how much they will get in return, the painting will make Pippa’s connection to her impossible to politely overlook.

Pippa knows the signs well enough to recognise that this conversation is veering into dangerous territory. She halts the paintbrush with a small movement of her hand, and comes to sit next to Hecate on the sofa.

‘What would you like me to say?’

Hecate, at that moment, does fidget. She looks at the floor, and attempts to find the words to explain that she’s worried that she’ll embarrass Pippa, in the way she always has.

‘Shall I tell you what I would like to say to anyone who comes into this office and asks about it?’ She strokes the nape of Hecate’s neck.

‘I’d like to say to them “this is a painting of the most brilliant witch I know, and the witch I love, even though she can be extremely difficult when sitting for a portrait. And isn’t it absolutely the most beautiful thing in the room?” And if they so much as look away, I’ll show them exactly what modern magic can do. It is my office, after all. What do you think of that for an answer?’

Hecate blushes at that; her cheeks flare up, a deeper and darker shade than Pippa’s own robes. But she doesn’t look away. She has been training herself to meet Pippa’s eye and to hold onto her hand when she feels like she ought to let go of it. She screws up what she supposes is courage. And perhaps this is the problem: she has always been directing this energy within herself, using it to keep herself in check, when she should have been directing it without herself. Into holding onto this hand. So she will have to retrain herself. She must also remember to breathe.

‘I am sorry that I don’t make this easy.’ (She means, and she thinks that Pippa knows she means that she’s sorry that she can’t _be_ easy, isn’t an easy person. Can’t relax into being loved like other people can. Certainly can’t relax into being the subject of portraiture.)

‘What I mean is—what I mean is that I love you and I am very, deeply, sorry, Pippa.’ (She says the first part of that sentence quickly and the second part slowly.) ‘For everything.’

Pippa looks at her. And knows that this could become a conversation about the last, lost thirty years. When she is being breezy about that time, she calls it a regret which she doesn’t have time for. When she is being honest about it, there are feelings there which are too painful to rake over. But she doesn’t miss the one small word which Hecate has used, which she rarely uses—rarely about herself, rarely this directly, rarely in that combination of subject verb object.

So she simply leans in closer, while Hecate, who is not naturally a good sitter for portraits or naturally demonstrative, brings up her hand and kisses it.

 

*

There is a part of Pippa which wishes that she had been more direct when they were young. How much time would that have saved them, if she had possessed the wisdom to speak, to own to her own feelings? (It was never the courage that Pippa lacked, only the understanding that Hecate did not realise how she felt.) Instead she had allowed the ambiguity continue; allowed them both to live in it **—** soak in it—until Hecate broke.

Ambiguity in spell casting is to be avoided at all costs. To murmur, to lose confidence, is to blunder. (It’s the same in traditional magic as modern magic.)

When trying to set up Pentangle’s, that rule also applied. It took her a while to learn it. She spent many weeks and months trying to strike some kind of compromise with the people she thought she should compromise with. Other witches; members of the council; ministers. A traditional school with a modern face; an integrated curriculum of mixed classes; all of these approaches put someone’s nose out of joint. Until she realised that genuflecting to the old ways did not make her happy, and all her concessions did not appease those who really hated the idea of her school—hated it to its core.

It was much easier when she decided finally to be clear about what she wanted. A modern magic school (girls and boys); staffs and wands for all (if they chose it); chanting for whoever chose to sign up for it. Let people murmur about it, but she would have the thing she wished.

So she changes her mind. She snaps her fingers, and the canvas on which the paintbrush has been working burns up, brightly, quickly. She decides to have a painting without ambiguity. A painting about which no questions can be asked, because the painting will speak for itself (no enchantments necessary). She rearranges the room, and has the paintbrush start again. It starts this time on a painting of the two of them, the connection between them unmistakeable, unambiguous. And Hecate sits still while it is painted; or almost still, save for the soft and regular motion of her hand stroking Pippa’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So muuuuch angssssst. But this is going somewhere, I swear. And thanks to everyone who left kudos/a comment. You are kind and make me feel a tiny bit less miserable about these gruesome times!


	4. Corrections to the Print Edition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Actually, it's about ethics in witching journalism.

A few things you should know about Parnell Batluck:

Though he’s relatively young, he’s the kind of reporter who’s fast going extinct, at the kind of paper which is itself in danger of dying out soon. But the paper— _The Witching Intelligencer_ —is the place he has always longed to work. A venerable and avowedly liberal institution. It’s the kind of paper which has always been ready to tackle the social issues of the magical world in the depth they deserve; its doughty editors living and dying by their credo of holding the powerful to account. _The Intelligencer_ ’s journalists have always looked down on those lesser papers which just want a quick fix instead of news—hacks who are happy with a scare headline and a few quotations wrenched out of context. Parnell feels a kind of spiritual alignment with the paper and its purpose. He too has the lofty dream of changing minds, of laying out for the readers the kind of hard questions which never get a proper airing.

Of course, holding the powerful to account is expensive. Nowadays, its circulation somewhat diminished and its profits even more so, _The Intelligencer_ ’s reporters have to make compromises. Today’s journalistic concession for Parnell is not one of integrity, but one of form. This piece—about what we want from modern magical education, and how we get it—is going to be produced not as a written story, but a video documentary. All in the aim of _The Intelligencer_ reaching a younger generation, people who supposedly prefer watching to reading, a generation of tired eyes. Whatever, it’s a concession he can live with.

He’s about to trundle off to the selected school (assistant, camera, notebook and other equipment packed up), when he has a stroke of luck. This, his first day of a week-long assignment, coincides with a breaking news story, directly relevant to his project. When the video documentary is ready, it won’t be relegated to the “Society” section of the paper, because of what the new minister for magical education on the council has said. It might even make it to the top of the front page. (An ambitious young wizard can dream, can't he?)

As he flies, he composes the introduction in his mind. The thing really writes itself:

_What does a good education mean these days? What is the right way to teach the next generation of witches and wizards? At the start of this week, Caernarvon Rook, the new and controversial minister for magical education, issued a provocative statement. Mr Rook accused institutions like Pentangle’s for being responsible for the decline in basic magical skills among young people. Mr Rook attributes this decline to the unwillingness of teachers at such schools to use corporal punishment to “make charms stick in the mind”. When invited to walk back his divisive comments, Mr Rook doubled down, saying that one couldn’t expect proper wizarding standards from an educational profession dominated by “soft-touch” witches._

_For one week, the team from The Witching Intelligencer has gained unparalleled access to Pentangle’s, following the lives of teachers and pupils at the academy, in order to get to the heart of the debate about the future of the craft itself. This is: “Pentangle’s: A School Under Siege?”_ [Is that title too much, too tabloid? He makes a note to review it later.]

 

  
*

Parnell is at lunch; he’s got interviews lined up for later in the day, but this morning he’s been content to take the temperature of the school. The students seem, so far, disappointingly similar to all the other children he’s encountered in the course of his life. All seem totally unaware of the bluster and angry words flying round the council about their education. He tries to calm his doubts and swallow them down: these are first day nerves, when you worry that your story is becalmed and your journalistic instincts are wrong. It’s a long story, it will take time for him to dig down to its bones. And everyone he’s encountered thus far (he’s yet to meet the headmistress) has been willing to talk.

So, time to refuel. He’s been seated next to a tall woman, dark hair pinned up in a bun, with exceptionally good posture and remarkably expressive eyebrows. He assumes she’s one of the teaching staff here, talks idly to her about the time he met the Great Wizard, but is really more interested in the basket of bread rolls just by her left elbow. He is committed to his craft, but he draws the line at taking notes during lunch.

He’s getting a strange look from his assistant, sitting several places down from him, who looks like she’s about to burst, but he’s not sure what it’s meant to betoken. He wonders if she’s asking him to pass him something along the table, but when he asks if she needs anything, she clams up.

The tall woman asks him a couple of questions. About the paper and how it’s funded (answer: charitable trust, no owner has control over the editorial line). About what he thinks of the recent calls for regulation of the wizarding presses and the inquiry into the conduct of certain wizard journalists found to be abusing their position. About—and she has weirdly good, like, scarily accurate information about this—the conflict at the heart of the grand council, and the personal and political intrigues behind the fall of the last administration. It’s only later (she gets up from the table, doesn’t take a pudding, while Parnell makes the most of his, because reporting is hungry work) that he realises that he was sort of being interrogated. Or delicately dissected. She got much more out of him than he managed to find out about her. She knows exactly what he thinks on each of these, but he has no idea of her position. He feels a little unbalanced.

Later on, his assistant comes up to him, asks if he knows who that was. He doesn’t, but he recognises the name when she tells him. So that was the great Hecate Hardbroom, then! By all accounts, the most dazzling magical mind of the age. Pioneer of several life-saving potions, she’s been repeatedly nominated for, and repeatedly refused to accept, any of the awards that acclaim her as a Leader of the Craft. Not surprising he didn’t recognise her immediately, because she famously declines invitations to the gala nights which celebrate the great and the good of the magical world. She’s not a recluse, exactly, but she is private in a way which makes her interesting. Hecate Hardbroom is not a teacher at Pentangle’s, of course—she’s at Cackle’s. Well, perhaps there’s part of a story there: about an exchange of teachers, about best practice and pooling of knowledge and resources, peer-assessment and feedback; witches helping witches to critique each other’s curricula. Not to fall into stereotypes, but witch-led education certainly seems much more cooperative, less competitive, than the wizardly schooling he remembers.

It strikes him too that he’s had lunch sitting next to actual power. Not power of the kind that the Great Wizard wields (political, inherited, won in a series of games and grabs and below-the-belt manoeuvring). But real power, the kind that can bring new spells into being, the kind that requires a natural affinity with magics, deep-running, molecular. He’s never known anyone who possessed that kind of power. It makes him wish he’d worked a bit harder in school, because he might then have something interesting to say to her if he runs into her again.

He’s taking all this a lot more calmly than his assistant. The girl seems a little star-struck, not far off a swoon. ‘Do you think we’ll see her again?’ she asks. She sounds as if she’s melting. Well, that kind of power is attractive. As is that kind of intellect. But Hecate Hardbroom must have returned to her own school, her own duties, because he doesn’t see her the next day. His assistant is crestfallen.

 

 

*

This is what he wants to get to—the interview.

‘I thought we might start with a general question about declining standards in magical education.’

Miss Pentangle looks a little bemused, but unruffled.

‘Certainly. What standards are those?’

‘Well, Mr Rook, just last week—‘

‘Yes, I’m quite familiar with Mr Rook’s claims. I was just wondering what statistics he is basing that claim upon, and how he’s measuring this so-called decline in magic? Because I can tell you that here, as at other magical academies, are standards are quite as high as they have ever been. We apply the same tests; we certainly do not let our students out into the world until they have demonstrated the competence and capacity expected of a practising witch or wizard.’

That’s actually a good point, and Parnell’s a little worried that he never considered it before. He flips through his notes, finds the comments, but it doesn’t seem that Mr Rook cited a source for his laments about the precipitous decline of magic.

The headmistress infers as much, and continues. ‘I have to ask, you see, because throwing these sort of claims around is liable to instigate a panic about the decline of magic; I can’t possibly imagine who that would serve.’

(Though she looks like she has a fairly good idea of who it might serve.)

Parnell clears his throat. ‘And how would you respond to the idea that mixed education might (he looks down at his notes to get the quotation spot on) be “confusing students about the respective roles of witches and wizards”?’

Miss Pentangle doesn’t blink, and bats the question right back at him. ‘I think it would be helpful if Mr Rook to define what he thinks the respective roles of witches and wizards should be. Because, as I’m sure you know, Mr Parnell, equality between witches and wizards has been codified in the magical statute books for the past fifty years. So.’

She’s canny, this one. Steely too.

‘But you do agree that your approach is non-traditional?’

‘Non-traditional, yes. In certain aspects. Non-traditional does not mean we compromise on standards; does not mean we allow magic to be practiced in a dangerous or sloppy way. We just happen to think students do best—flourish—when they are allowed to develop a certain sympathy with their own magic.’

She stops herself. She sighs. ‘I suppose the next question on your list is about the validity of using physical punishment to reinforce magical learning?’

‘It is, yes. Do you need to take a break?’

‘No, no, I’m happy to go on. It’s just I don’t really think there’s much point to my answering these questions. You must understand that I will answer them, and we’re happy to have you here, but I don’t see why our conversation should revolve around Mr Rook. I don’t see why my school—my students—should be hijacked to allow Caernarvon Rook to make a political point for his own audience.’

‘Audience?’

‘Mr Rook isn’t interested in talking to these students, or even to their parents. He’s speaking to those who entertain a picaresque fantasy of what magic was in the Good Old Days. Which were not so good for everyone, let me tell you. And all the better if he can make his point with reference to a silly witch in pink robes.’

Parnell suddenly feels a tingle in his shoulder, an old school injury. Miss Pentangle is certainly a more formidable opponent than Mr Rook has assumed.

 

 

*

He manages a few other interviews, but nothing quite as revealing as that first one. He follows round a third-year student, a new transfer. When Parnell asks why she left her old school, she suddenly becomes less ebullient and won’t say. Nor will she say where she was the year before. But she won’t shut up—positively gushes—when it comes to Miss Pentangle.

He thinks for a while, after that conversation, and maybe he grasps a bit better the message they seem to endlessly repeat in the assemblies here. He’s found it annoying, actually, the monotonous refrain about there being no particular size, shape or mould to magic. About it all being personal.

He walks up and down the hall (padding quietly) during some mock examinations. He stands at the front to take a few shots. There’s what Mr Rook has been complaining about: witches allowed to wear wizard’s robes, and wizard’s witches. He can’t see what the fuss is about; even how it could prove as distracting as Mr Rook claims. Everyone just gets on with their exam. Standing at the front of the hall, it’s hard to really distinguish the long gown of a wizard from the long gown of a witch, anyway. He has a journalist’s eye though, and he can definitely pick out the students who haven’t done as much revision as they should have. Well, he used to be one of those guys. Still is, when frantically writing to a deadline.

He manages to catch up with a few teachers in the staffroom. He’s done the background research; all qualified, all registered, all checked out thoroughly before they were appointed. Specialists in their respective fields. But he can’t get very much out of them, because they’re all busy and a bit distracted. A new directive is being mooted in the grand council, giving parents the chance to veto school classes they don’t like, or content they do not think is appropriate.

His assistant is also a bit sulky, mainly because he’s dismissed her idea about going to Cackle’s Academy for a follow-up piece. No prizes for guessing who she wants to interview there. But he’s already pushing his luck with his editor, and the budget won’t stretch to it. He sends her off to do some background research for the kind of content they’re now meant to be focused upon: ‘Which Great Wizard from History are You?’—one of those multiple choice quizzes where you tick off boxes and have something meaningful revealed about your personality in the process.

 

 

*

It’s the third night. Full access means staying overnight; fortunately they’ve given Parnell an adult-sized bed in his own adult-sized room. It’s not like the dormitories he remembers, which is good. They could be rough if you were small or didn’t know how to stick up for yourself. He falls into an uncomplicated sleep.

It must be early in the morning when the fire alarm goes off. After a moment of confusion, his brain grinding through the gears more quickly than usual, Parnell isn’t scared. He knows from his own time in school that if it is a real fire and not a drill, then it’s most likely only some student experiment gone wrong, hijinks or a midnight prank. He’s a pro, so he grabs the camera before he troops down the stairs, joining the rest of the blinking (but highly excitable) student body.

Turns out that it’s not a real fire but nor is it a drill, as they all file out onto the main lawn to line up and be counted. It’s not what he’s expecting. There’s smoke, but it’s coming from outside the building, and the clouds are more concentrated on the lawn than inside. A bonfire, maybe? People are coughing, no-one can see, and then suddenly it clears a bit.

Floating in front of the entrance to the school is a large banner—it must be ten feet tall. It has a message written on it, thirteen words in very plain font:

‘The Alliance for Traditional Witchcraft says NO to the debasement of the craft!’

Just then, after they’ve all had a chance to read the banner, and take it in for a few seconds, something sets off a round of loud pink fireworks. (It drowns out the sound of a couple of first-year students asking what ‘debasement’ means.) It’s only then he notices it. Also floating and facing the entrance to the school, is some kind of mannequin, on fire. Life-size. At first he thinks it’s been hit by a firework and set alight, but when he manages to focus through the smoke he sees it’s standing on top of a pile of wood and straw. He can see by the light of the flames and the explosions in the sky around him that the mannequin is dressed in pink robes, has a kind of badly-cut yellow wig on its head. Oh.

Parnell Batluck is scrupulously independent as a journalist. He respects the right to protest (a founding principle of _The Witching Intelligencer_ , where lacking first-hand experience of some kind of protest, march, or act of civil disobedience is considered to be a lack of a fundamental life experience). But he’s not entirely sure this constitutes a protest, rather than, say, a fairly vile publicity stunt or out-and-out trespass. And the burning of witches—even just dummies of witches—isn’t on. There are big bad historical associations there; it’s not really a joke, has a pretty threatening edge to it. Possibly that pushes it into the category of a hate crime.

Miss Pentangle is standing directly in front of the sign and the dummy, staring. Probably it’s one of those enchantments you can’t clear away until the magic has worn itself out (and the firecrackers and smoke stop going off). The other teachers are there, but hanging back lamely at the side, not sure what to do. Some are making a sort of effort to count students, acting as if it were a real fire drill, others to distract them.

Miss Pentangle has her back to him. He can see the magic crackling at her fingertips. She must be much angrier than he’s seen her in his three days here; much angrier than when he was putting all those quotations to her, when she never batted an eyelid. He can’t see her face. But it’s a situation in which he’d probably be crying; she might be.

He feels like an interloper, wonders if it might not be better to creep back to his room.

And then there’s someone at Miss Pentangle’s side. Saying ‘don’t—don’t.’ She’s more soothing than he’d expect from one with such sharp corners. She looks less sharp too, with her hair down and unruly, wrapped in a dark dressing gown, its belt trailing a little on the ground. She stands in front of Miss Pentangle, and looks her in the eye, and presses her hand. She says something for a minute. Parnell can’t hear, and, despite his journalistic commitment, doesn’t think he should really try to.

And then Miss Pentangle falls into Miss Hardbroom, and holds herself there for several moments. Steadying herself. Now Miss Hardbroom is speaking, low and urgent, into her ear, and her arms are wrapped around Miss Pentangle in a way which makes him think of a protection spell.

After a couple of minutes, Miss Pentangle puts back on the composed face he recognises from the day. She addresses the students, then ushers them all inside. They will deal with the fallout in when it is light. As they tramp back inside, it’s clear that some of the older students already get it, but are trying to avoid answering questions from the younger ones, putting them off until someone in authority can explain. In the background, Miss Hardbroom sweeps away the guy and the banner with a flick of her hand and a look of disgust. Parnell goes out later in the morning with the camera and records the pattern of scorch marks on the ground.

 

 

*

It’s the last day. He’s wrapped up, said his goodbyes, thanked the various teachers, filmed some background shots and recorded a few last words from students that will help him make the transition between scenes more seamless.

This is his favourite stage of a project, imagining how to put it all together, before he has to make any real editorial decisions or cuts. Last night he’d been reviewing the footage. Just…speculating, trying out ideas to see how they might fit. And then something had struck him: both a matter of curiosity, and a matter of journalistic ethics. There was something unmistakable and intimate in the video testimony; something which might tell a story, but something he’s not sure really has a place in his documentary.

He thinks back to a call he’d received the day before he left for this assignment, without notice, from one of Caernarvon Rook’s political advisors. And that in itself was strange, because _The Intelligencer_ is not the sort of paper Mr Rook normally talks to, either on or off the record. Parnell had assumed it was just going to be a complaint about some story or other he’d filed, or a regularly-scheduled protest about how out-of-touch _The Intelligencer_ was with ordinary wizarding values and how it might want to watch its licence to publish. But no, instead the advisor had just called to wish him well during his week embedded at Pentangle’s.

‘We think it will do everyone the world of good to discover what’s really hiding under those pink robes.’ (And wasn’t that a pretty creepy way to phrase it?). ‘Good to let magical folk make their own decision about whether certain of her predilections are really in line with keeping charge over young witches and wizards.’

At the time it had just seemed a weird attempt to egg him on, or a mind-game, or a coded reminder not to write anything too flattering about Pentangle’s.

And so he knocks on the office. He’s not brought his recording device, only a notebook.

Miss Pentangle answers and she looks rather harassed, even a bit crumpled; possibly she’s not standing straight but leaning on the door. But her voice comes off bright as ever.

‘Forgotten something, Mr Batluck?’

‘I was wondering if I could speak to Miss Hardbroom, actually. If she’s in the school, at all? I wondered whether you might know? Just on the off chance…’.

‘You’re in luck. She…happens to be here.’

There’s a small scoffing sound behind Miss Pentangle. ‘Fortuitous, is it not?’ Miss Hardbroom seems amused by the situation, or at least the way he’s tried to so casually frame his question about her presence. She ushers him in.

He realises he’s interrupted some kind of conversation, some kind of strategizing. He can see half-finished cups of tea sitting on various surfaces; piles of paper and folders which look both official and legal; a rumpled pink blanket. He should make this quick.

‘I won’t sit, thanks. Just two questions.’

Hecate Hardbroom nods, like a Roman emperor acceding to a petition. He notes—despite himself—the very fine line of her neck, but he can’t help that, his assistant having spent at least twenty slightly tipsy minutes last night speaking in praise of it.

‘It’s, er, just about tradition. The concept, I mean.’ (He’s not doing a very good job of this). ‘Your name is associated throughout the educational world with a defence of tradition. You’re known as an upholder of the old ways of the craft. But some people, our new minister for one, would say that Pentangle’s represents quite the opposite of that. So how do you square that circle?’

She looks at him, appraisingly. She’s not perturbed by the question, but frowns at him, as if he’s failed to grasp something plainly obvious.

‘Mr Batluck. There’s _tradition_ and then there’s tradition. Do not mistake the way in which I work my magic, a personal choice, for an endorsement of a certain political agenda. Yes, Pippa and I disagree on matters of the curriculum. Frequently, in fact. You could set your watch by it—I suspect she does’. Miss Hardbroom allows herself another smirk. ‘It doesn’t mean that I am happy to endorse the torture of students in the name of tradition. And nor am I so stupid or so set in my ways as to follow tradition blindly. This entire school is a lesson the educational advancements which are possible when one is willing to be a little less rigid. The witching world would be vastly better if others were to follow the example set at Pentangle’s.’

‘Right. Right-o.’ He thinks he gets it. Nods, and scribbles.

‘Feel free to quote me on that’, she adds. ‘Though be sure to apply a Spelling Correction spell over the piece first. I’ve noticed the rate of typographical errors in the paper has rocketed since you sacked your last sub-editor.’

Well. _Well_. He wouldn’t have pegged Hecate Hardbroom for an _Intelligencer_ reader. He vows to take greater care with his copy in future, now he knows who will be watching.

‘And the second?’

He’s confused. ‘Second?’

‘You had two questions.’

‘Ah, yes. Well, it’s for both of you, really. It’s whether you mind, whether you consent to, me using the recording from Wednesday night in the film.’

He doesn’t mean the banner and the burning—that’s already been reported; impossible to stop the students relaying it to their parents; impossible to miss the bright pink mist burning in the sky for miles around. And impossible to miss the images of the “protest” that the anonymous members of the Alliance for Traditional Witchcraft had themselves sent to the press. Investigation ongoing; a story to follow up when he gets back.

He means the bit after that, the personal bit. Happily, Miss Hardbroom seems to grasp that without him having to explain it any further.

‘I see no reason why not.’

‘Just so we’re clear—the night of the ….event, and what happened on the lawn?’

Miss Pentangle watches Miss Hardbroom. Like she’s not sure what the response will be when the question is put a second time. ‘I am happy’ (she says “happy” like it’s firmly underlined) ‘for you to put it in your film.’

Miss Pentangle just nods. Like she’s dazed or proud. Or like she’s been given a gift. Again, he feels like he is intruding on some protection spell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My hands are SO HEAVY, I'm so sorry.
> 
> Side note: swooning assistant is without a doubt the most relatable character I have ever written.


	5. Rules for a Secret Society

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some gavelling and much appreciation.

She gavels the meeting to order.

It’s actually (actually) really hard being the leader of a secret society.

It’s not all fighting against the forces of evil, practicing mock duels in case they ever end up in a Section 7 situation. Look, Esmerelda Hallow could do that with her eyes closed, she’s—not to boast—the most able student in the school. And all that stuff is a bit ridiculous anyway. Showy. It’s not the point of magic to end up in those situations. Witches and wizards should be doing something constructive, useful with magic. Useful like mixing new potions and improving incantations, not just firing off sparks and waving their wands around. Those convictions have only become stronger since she lost—and then regained—her magic.

It’s not even something she can put on her CV. ‘President, HB Appreciation Society’ is not exactly going to impress future employers.

And it is a lot of work. Membership keeps growing (HBAS is invitation-only, because they’re trying to keep it quiet, and don’t want HB herself to find out about it). But at the moment, a fierce debate—she wouldn’t necessarily call it an argument—is raging amongst its members about whether to introduce membership cards and/or badges. And who would get to design them if they did. Esme despairs. As a president, she shouldn't take a position. But it’s not what HBAS was founded for. And it’s also a profoundly bad idea. They can’t exactly go around the school sporting little badges with HB’s face on them. That would break the second rule of HBAS: be subtle.

 

 

*

Nothing creepy. That’s the first rule of HB Appreciation Society. Don’t be creepy, and don’t ever, _ever_ do anything to embarrass HB.

Just, you know, nice things. Helpful things.

For example. If you notice that the potions lab is running low on supplies, you volunteer to go and collect some more from the pond, or garden, or forest. Because HB has enough additional pressures to worry about of late (school inspections, the Big Freeze, writing up a new 40-point plan for the protection of the Foundation Stone, complete with several appendices and contingency plans, a document which the Grand Council has insisted upon and which HB, feeling responsible for what happened last time, refuses to delegate to anyone else). If you see that one of the textbooks is looking dog-earred and dirty, you surreptitiously mutter an incantation to clean it up, ensuring it stays in circulation for a little bit longer, saving HB the annoyance (and budgetary strain) of having to order a new copy.

If you catch a younger student in the corridor complaining rudely about HB or telling some invented story about her pedagogical excesses, you correct them. Because half the rumours you hear flying round the school aren’t just embellishments, but are flat-out untrue. Amazing what young witches are willing to assume about a teacher because she has a particular manner and makes no denial of wanting the best from her students.

If you’re in her final class of the day, and you see a tendril of HB’s hair slipping from its grip, then you don’t say anything, but you magic up some hair pins, and have them land on her desk. (There’s a constant stream of commentary in HBAS meetings about the number of pins she must go through.)

They’re only paying her back for the things she’s done for them over the years. Although there might be some students in the club who are using their admiration for HB to work through certain other feelings. Esme doesn’t want to be drawn on that personally, thanks. Though, to be honest, HB knows quite a lot about Esme’s personal life. The story goes something like this.

It had been the night before Esme was due to sit a special examination—HB had encouraged her with it, helped her complete the application. It’s for a place on a prestigious summer school, a course for the most talented young wizards and witches. Cackle’s has never before sent a student, but HB attended something similar when she was younger. And just knowing that made Esme’s heart swell with pride.

Of course the night before, everything had gone wrong—horribly, awfully wrong. It had involved a girl, of course. Things had been said. They’d been said with such a casual kind of cruelty that it had almost turned her inside out; the kind of cruelty that can only be the product of former intimacy. She suddenly found it hard to breathe. Esme won’t say it broke her heart, but it did break some part of her.

She’d made up her mind to withdraw from the examination altogether. Went to HB’s office, late at night, hammered on the door and tried to tell HB she couldn’t sit the test. And then it all came pouring out. She hadn’t meant it to. She can’t quite work out how she ended up crying, weeping even, in front of HB. HB, whose evening she’d undoubtedly interrupted, who she’d possibly even woken up, who was entitled to be furious with her squalling, babyish behaviour—well, HB merely took out a dark green handkerchief, passed it to her. Patted her on the back. ‘It is hard.’

HB understood—intuitively, personally—that this was not something Esme would be discussing with her mother.

HB had known what to say, and had spent almost two hours saying it. Not probing about the girl, but just saying she had complete confidence in Esme’s abilities. HB who has taught Esme everything she knows about magic. And adding, that ‘speaking from experience, these things do get easier. In time.’ She’d smiled at Esme with a kind of grim understanding when she said that bit. From HB, that was as much of an admission as you would ever get.

‘And you must come and speak to me, whenever you need.’

The next morning, she’d sailed through the test. She’d felt a bit wobbly going in, but took out the green handkerchief and placed it on her desk. Known that someone was backing her. And it had worked: her marks were the highest, placing her at the top of the international rankings by some margin. When the results had arrived at the school, HB hadn’t acknowledged the trauma of the night before the exam, but nodded and said curtly, ‘only as much as I was expecting’.

So is it any wonder she’s the president and founder member? If you’d asked her to make a list of all the things HB had done for her, she wouldn’t know where to begin. But she might start with how HB had written to her after she had lost her magic. Written to her by non-magical means and through the non-magical post. HB had gone to the trouble of working out the non-magical postal system, even its stupid fiddly little stamps with the strange heads on them, all in an attempt to make Esme feel better, less alone. She gets a little teary thinking of it (she was much more teary at the time).

Not everyone in the HBAS is top of the class. A sizeable proportion of its members are students who credit HB with pushing them through the revision sessions that saved their scholastic careers, allowed them to pass their end-of-year exams. It was HB who drove them to cast spells they never thought they’d be able to do without assistance, spells they’d always assumed were beyond their capabilities. These are the HBAS members who get particularly agitated when other students call HB mean. ‘Miss Hardbroom is the only reason I’m still at this school. She’s trying to get you to think for yourselves. She wants you to be the best witches you can be, she really does.’ They rhapsodise and evangelise.

In any case, they would all defend her to the death. You know how much someone with her magical abilities could make in the private sector? Esme, coming into her office to borrow some books (lent from HB’s own collection) has once or twice caught sight of the job offers which regularly land on HB’s table. The figures are staggering; large enough even to impress Mrs Hallow. HB, embarrassed, waved her hand and rearranged some books in order to hide the letters. She’s practiced in concealing how much she’s worth, Esme thinks.

Esme does some concealing too, when Miss Bat hears them talking about HBAS (pronounced “aitch bass”) when they’re getting out their chant books for practice. And honestly, what bad luck to be overheard by a teacher who usually drifts above the clouds for the entirety of the lesson. ‘What’s that then, girls? An AitchBus? Something relevant to your studies, I hope!’

Esme—scrabbling—claims H-Boss is a singer in the non-magical world, whose metrical rhythms bear a striking resemblance to the tempo and cadence of witches’ chant. Something she’d noticed during her time without magic. Miss Bat looks intrigued, and Esme thinks they’ve got away with it. Until Miss Bat instructs her to bring in some of this music for their next lesson, because comparative studies of chant (even the non-magical kind) can be extremely productive. Esme just closes her eyes, opens her mouth to chant, and prays that Miss Bat will have forgotten this instruction by the time the next class rolls around.

 

 

*

You’ve got to be subtle though. Maybe that should be the second _and_ third rule of HBAS.

This is also why Miss Pentangle could never be a member of the society. Be subtle, Esme instructs the members, in a way in which Pippa Pentangle really isn’t. HBAS leaves its little gifts at the end of class, or at the end of the day, ideally in places and corners where HB will notice them but which no-one else will observe. By contrast, the whole advanced potions lab sits up when a cup of tea suddenly appears with a clink on HB’s desk, mid-class, with a little label attached and imbuing the room with a fragrant, spring-like bloom. HB reads the label, smiles to herself. Or when Miss Pentangle decides to send a message, and a pale pink bat with a small white flower in its mouth starts tapping, insistently, at the window of the lab, demanding to be let in. It wasn’t even Valentine’s Day. Esme had glared at her classmates, summoned up her most frightening glower, daring them to make a comment. Her look had the desired effect—everyone pretended they hadn’t seen the bat, or heard its screeching, and busied themselves with their cauldrons and scales as HB had stepped quickly across the room to let it in.

(They all love Miss Pentangle. Not just because HB obviously loves her too. The only proof needed of that: HB would hardly forgive anyone else who sent a pink bat flapping into the castle to interrupt her teaching. If HB wasn’t so soppy about her, that bat would have been dropped into a cauldron and its bones dissolved to make some kind of ointment. No, they all love Miss Pentangle. Some of the members have even suggested turning HBAS into HB/PPAS. That’s too far, thinks Esme, and far too ugly an acronym. And if HB ever found out, she’d certainly find it intrusive, might even be a little wounded. See the first rule.)

So they limit themselves only to this. If they see Miss Pentangle at Cackle’s, they go out of their way to ensure HB isn’t disturbed. Don’t bother her after hours, try to dissuade first-years from doing stupid or dangerous things in classes, so HB doesn’t have to stay behind to fix them up. It doesn’t always work, but then younger students are tricky to wrangle. They must have won HB and Miss Pentangle a few half hours of peace over the course of the term, though.

 

 

*

There’s one other thing. One thing that will turn Esmerelda Hallow, Head Girl, notoriously even-tempered and fair-handed, levelled-headed witch who has time for everyone and wants to make the best out of things, into a snarling, growling monster.

She rounds on a group of second years, giggling away at the mention of when HB became Miss Softbroom. (Esme hadn’t been there at the time, but she’s heard the stories.)

‘It’s not really funny, though, is it? Being drugged, having no control over your body?’ She shivers at the thought of the magic draining out of her, a different kind of loss of control. ‘Do you really think that’s funny? It’s sadistic.’

Beatrice and Clarice frown, like they’re both considering a proposition which has never been put to them before. If the thought has flitted across their minds before, it’s certainly never been put to them with this kind of fervour.

Esme pushes. ‘What if there was a bit of you that you didn’t want on show to everyone? Would you be happy if that was just magicked out of you and put on show?’

They look a bit abashed. ‘Hadn’t thought of it like that’, one of them mumbles.

Esme doesn’t mean to be harsh. Just to get them to think again. People’s lives aren’t just playthings for the amusement of others. Privacy is important. Actually, that’s the one thing she thinks the non-magical world might understand better than the magical one. Magic gives you the power to pry into anything you want, but it doesn’t give you the right. Magic, properly practiced, ought to be about control, accuracy and direction. Suddenly she realises who she sounds like. But that’s no bad thing. HB’s formation of her runs more deeply than she’d considered before.

 

 

*

It’s the end of the year. Time for the final meeting and the final review of the accounts before the long summer. Not financial accounts, obviously. They review all the things they’ve done for HB (and she’s done for them) over the year, and offer suggestions for next year, discuss anything that will need a little planning.

Esme’s running a bit late. She’s been kept in HB’s office with Miss Pentangle, who wonders if Esme would be willing to do some tutoring for some Pentangle’s students over the summer. They’re having a hard time grasping the basics, and need someone who can talk them through it, carefully, kindly. ‘And Hecate suggested, as her star pupil…’. Esme—even though she is used to praise, and an expert at modestly shrugging off her own achievements—blushes, turning the same shade as that little pink bat.

Before the meeting, Esme had wondered if HB would be there too, but she hadn’t been. Esme didn’t ask, obviously, because subtlety is the second and third rule of HBAS. Even though she knows that Miss Pentangle knows she knows, and that Miss Pentangle loves to talk about HB quite as much as anyone in the society.

By the time she’s finished making arrangements with Miss Pentangle, the members of HBAS are queuing up for the meeting, although they’re all doing their best to look as if this is just a casual chat in a corridor full of people who have unexpectedly run into each other. Just in case a sharp-eyed teacher should enquire. They really need to come up with a more convincing cover story; that should be on the agenda for the first meeting of next term.

Esme unlocks the door to the meeting room. It’s really just her bedroom, repurposed for the afternoon. The room and the chairs are as she left them. But there’s a box on the table she doesn’t recognise, and which wasn’t there when she left. They open it carefully, in case there’s an enchantment on it. It is full of small, plain black buttons. And, next to it, a cake covered in black icing. In front of both, an envelope, with the letters ‘HBAS’ printed carefully on the outside. Inside, there’s square of card which just says (in a recognisable gothic hand, familiar to Esme from those non-magical letters), ‘thank you’. And beneath, in smaller writing, an afterthought, ‘not to be worn to classes.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cackle's tremendously heterosexual Academy.
> 
> Thank you once again for all the supportive comments. All these little threads from previous chapters will be picked up and strung together soon!


	6. Political Fixes, Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Great Wizards don't simply drop in, unless it is to advance the plot and provide a cliffhanger.
> 
> Disclaimer: I feel like my political biases have been made apparent in earlier chapters, and if you squint you may well discern them in this. If this is not to your taste, feel free to complain in the comments.

 ‘Miss Hardbroom, what’s a referendum?’

Mildred Hubble is either feeling particularly brave or particularly stupid today. It might in fact be the case that those two parts of the brain are more closely connected in Mildred than in other pupils. And, yes, it might be a legitimate question, but it is not a question you blurt out in the middle of Miss Hardbroom’s attempts to explain a particularly complicated fix for a transformation spell. On the other hand, Hecate Hardbroom is teacher enough to realise that earnest questions from students (on proper academic subjects) deserve a proper answer. This is not to be mistaken for indulgence, especially if this is a device for dragging the lesson off its course.

‘A vote, Mildred Hubble. A vote of all witches and wizards. _Some people_ argue that the only way in which the Code can be changed is through such a vote.’ She wants to note that the scholarship is contested on this point, but there’s no point presenting the subtleties before a student has even grasped the basics. ‘Occasionally the Council calls a vote in order to get backing for a new rule it wants to introduce, or a rule it wishes to remove.’

 ‘Then a referendum is a good thing.’ Mildred makes this comment as if it’s the conclusion of an internal argument she has been having. And really, what does go on in that brain?

This is hardly the place, with cauldrons half-heated in front of them, for a lesson on politics. And material so basic is the domain of Witchory, a class which Mr Rowan-Webb is _supposed_ to teach. But has he? Apparently not. So once again, Miss Hardbroom’s lesson must be disrupted to accommodate the failings of her colleagues, to whom the idea of a lesson plan is a foreign and suspect concept.

‘That is rather a simplistic perspective. A referendum is a notoriously blunt tool, which is one of the reasons they are used so sparingly.’

Mildred looks confused. Miss Hardbroom had been expecting her to follow the first question with something outrageous—an appeal for a vote on abolishing end-of-year examinations, for example. But it seems in this instance she really is just curious. There are worse things to be.

‘But isn’t updating the rules a good thing? Or getting rid of bad old rules? And letting everyone have a say.’ Miss Hardbroom must admit that Mildred’s instincts are well-intentioned, even if fundamentally misguided and founded on an appallingly naive belief in the fairness of the world. So her response is not as biting as it might be. She will disillusion Mildred gently.

But now everyone else is listening too—this is not just a Mildred Hubble special.

‘Mildred. Imagine Miss Cackle had decided to put the question of whether you were able to come to this school to a vote. A vote of people who’d never met you and only knew about you the things other people had told them. People who had only heard about your _unique_ _propensity_ for magical accidents or the time your familiar stole the Great Wizard’s hat.’ (Mildred frowns, evidently having believed that Miss Hardbroom was ignorant of that particular debacle.) ‘Would you be content to allow that vote to decide your place, rather than your own peculiar merits?’

Mildred shakes her head, emphatically, plaits swinging round.

‘Referendums are so rarely about the merits of anything, and most of the time about people’s deepest, darkest, prejudices and the side which can mobilise them most effectively.’ Hecate shivers, inwardly; tries to dispel the chill that has come to settle on her, and return to the instruction of the young.

‘Who can name me a referendum?’

‘Witching Equality?’ suggests Maud. (Yes, Maud would know, because her grandfather had been active on the right side of that campaign, and received a considerable amount of hatred for it.)

‘Yes, Miss Spellbody. Witching Equality. A prime example. That vote only passed by 58 percent. Never forget, girls, that only fifty years ago, 42 percent of the magical world didn’t think witches were equal to wizards. Within my lifetime.’ She’s now too irritated by her own history lesson to be held back by any of the usual scruples about revealing her approximate age.

But that’s sufficient now. She’s covered the basics; she tries to draw it to a close.

‘Referendums might seem to be a useful way of fixing your problems. But they do not bring out the best in people. Why has this been occupying you, Mildred Hubble, rather than the correct technique for crushing hawthorn root?’

‘I was listening to Mr and Mrs Hallow when they came to visit’ (‘disgusting eavesdropper!’, hisses Ethel) ‘and Mrs Hallow says there might be another one soon.’

Miss Hardbroom rolls her eyes. Wants to say: no minister would be so stupid as to launch a referendum at this time of extreme political instability. Instead: ‘unlikely.’

‘Miss Hardbroom, what would it be about, anyw—‘

‘That’s quite enough now, Mildred. And the rest of you too. Back to your chopping boards; if I don’t see fourteen perfectly-brewed draughts by the end of this lesson, you will all be returning here after dinner. And that will not be put to a public vote. My classroom should not be mistaken for a democracy.’

 

 

*

She’s forgotten the conversation with Mildred by the time she arrives at Pentangle’s that evening.

Frankly she has more pressing things to worry about; it’s Pippa’s birthday. Hecate’s view (when it comes to her own birthday) is that she is much too old to celebrate; that birthdays, anyway, mean much less to a witch than any of the properly magical days which are fixed in the calendar, when the old magic runs deeper. But she is also aware that this view is old fashioned and that she has too often in the past used this reasonable point to excuse her own less-than-social qualities. So, despite her desire for quiet, Hecate has offered herself up as a sacrifice. If Pippa would like her to plan something, she will. She will even attempt to orchestrate a ‘surprise’. With very little persuasion at all she would have provided balloons. But Pippa, quieter and less gleaming than usual, only wanted to take dinner in the hall, and then walk in the grounds. They amble aimlessly but not unhappily. She leans against Hecate and asks her just to talk to her, to fill the empty air. She doesn’t particularly feel like thinking. So Hecate recites the list of books she’s ordering for the new school year, expanding into a commentary on their relative advantages and failings. Hecate is not what one would call a natural romantic, but even she suspects that this is quite far off a list of sweet nothings. Pippa squeezes her hand, looks tired, tells her to continue.

And now, alone in her rooms ( _their_ rooms, Pippa insists, correcting her each time), Pippa is content to play with Hecate’s hair, twisting it round her fingers. This, apparently, is immensely soothing (Hecate can’t attest to this, as she has only ever run her hands through her own hair to pin it up or draw it down; it’s never had any calming effect on her; it’s only a source of annoyance, given that her hair pins go missing so frequently).

Pippa is fretting because the Great Wizard is making an impromptu visit to Pentangle’s tomorrow, but he refuses to disclose his purpose in advance. Great Wizards don’t simply just drop in. Hecate tries to soothe, instil her with a note of confidence: Pentangle’s is the gold standard of magical education; he can have no credible criticism to raise. But both of them can guess the likely outline of his purpose: he’ll want probably to set some impossible target which schools will have to meet; probably to say that headteachers will now be held personally accountable for any slight misstep of their pupils. Hecate listens to Pippa’s tone, and worries that there’s some deeper crack of stress in her voice that can’t usually be detected in daylight hours.

Perhaps they should just abandon all of this, she wonders, and go somewhere else, do something else. Scoop up their familiars and retire to the woods, spend their time unfurling magical properties of roots and chants hitherto unknown. She cautiously floats this idea. It hangs in the air for a second, and then they both smile, realising that other lives would satisfy neither of them.

Before she falls asleep that night, she wonders how bad it will be. The Great Wizard has been in frenetic campaign mode of late, moving from one ridiculous publicity stunt after another, all in an attempt to see off his political enemies. Much as she dislikes his manner, she concedes that most of the other candidates for his job are worse. Then Pippa turns in the bed beside her, and her attention snaps back to the real and the present.

 

 

*

He arrives just after breakfast, just as Hecate is thinking about leaving. There’s much pomp and a flurry of advisors and young wizards tripping over themselves to agree with him. The Great Wizard doesn’t ask why she’s there, but after greeting them both and urging Pippa outside, adds, ‘Yes, you should come too, Hecate. Good for you to be there for this. United front.’

Hecate looks at Pippa, but it is clear from her expression that she has no idea either what that is meant to mean. But deference to the Code (even the parts of it which Hecate thinks wizards have rather misinterpreted to their own advantage over the years), applies. She follows. How tiresome, though, to be used for the Great Wizard’s scene setting.

Hecate is mostly tuning out, as she stands on the magicked-up platform at the front of Pentangle’s. The students have been obliged to stand outside too, as if this were some sort of al-fresco learning opportunity and not a simple display of naked political opportunism. Doubtless the Great Wizard will want to be photographed smiling with a few young people later, feigning interest in their unremarkable opinions. At least the students have been spared the stage. It’s just the three of them up here, the Great Wizard standing between her and Pippa. He’d arranged them specifically, as if they were dolls—another example of wizard chauvinism (let it go, Hecate, let it go).

He is still going on.

‘Another policy announcement, Great Wizard?’ someone had asked him before he began his (tiresomely long, predictably rambling) speech. He’d just winked at the journalist and laughed. ‘You’ll see. I think _some_ of you will be very pleased when I’m done.’ There are more cameras assembled than Hecate had predicted.

The Great Wizard seems—for all the attention that Hecate is paying to his words—to be reciting a list of his achievements in office. If this is the announcement of a new educational policy, he’s taking a very long run up to it. What’s she thinking about?  She’s thinking about whether she really did enough for Pippa’s birthday. Whether, for all Pippa’s insistence that it was enough, it wasn’t enough—and she ought to have intuited that.

She hears Pippa cough, and turns to see that (behind the Great Wizard’s back), she’s shooting Hecate a look of insistence. As if Hecate is missing something right under her nose. She raises an eyebrow, tunes back into the speech.

‘—settle this once and forever. I don’t see why good, law-abiding witches and wizards shouldn’t have the opportunity that is extended to us all. Why a wizard who loves another wizard, or a witch who loves another witch shouldn’t have that relationship endorsed by the Code. And—‘

Surely not. Surely even he wouldn’t think this was a good idea—

(She’s not frightened, just absolutely sure that she does not have the time, energy or patience for what she’s almost sure the Great Wizard is planning.)

And she’s been mistaken, because she’s not here as part of the on-stage backdrop, she’s here as a political prop.

‘I don’t see why Miss Pentangle and Miss Hardbroom—two upstanding witches—shouldn’t have the opportunity to marry.’ He coughs, and adds awkwardly by way of further clarification. ‘Each other, I mean.’

And then he raises both his arms: he’s holding Pippa’s hand on one side and Hecate’s on the other. Exactly when did he grab her hand, and why hadn’t she noticed? He raises their hands aloft like they’re prize fighters at a bout. Prize fighters, yes, a good analogy, because Hecate does feel like she has been punched out for several rounds and can’t quite follow the scene unfolding in front of her. With her. Which she is a part of.

Then turns back to himself. ‘As someone who has _always_ been a champion of equality and fairness in the magical community, I am announcing a referendum to amend the Code on this issue.’

Lots of cameras click. There’s some loud applause from the Great Wizard’s aides, which doesn’t really seem to be picked up by the audience. It seems to be taking the Pentangle’s students a few minutes to catch up and understand what has actually been proposed (so perhaps Mildred Hubble is not in the minority and witching education has overlooked the necessity of explaining the constitutional framework of the Code). Hecate clenches the hand which is not in the grip of the Great Wizard, counting backwards in her head to prevent herself from unleashing the incantation she would like. And the only reason she’s doing that is because cursing the Great Wizard into the ether and salting the ground beneath them would reflect badly on Pippa. Whom she is not, currently, quite able to look at.

 

 

*

This is absolutely the worst situation.

‘I can’t’ (and she can scarcely control her breathing, scarcely pull out the words, scarcely recall the form that language takes in the midst of her fury) ‘believe he did that. That he did that and then disappeared in a literal—a literal—puff of smoke.’ She ends with what is unmistakably a growl, which is surely loud enough and dark enough to reverberate in the corridors off from Miss Pentangle’s rooms.

‘So you wouldn’t want to marry me.’ Pippa’s look is rather challenging.

‘It’s the constitutional principle. Boiling down complex questions, complex questions with real personal consequences, into a yes or no answer. Boiling down my rights, my personhood—your rights, Pippa—into a yes or no answer. The insufferable arrogance, the sheer short-sightedness of that man, is astounding.’

‘Can’t help but notice that there’s one other yes or no question you seem to be ignoring here.’

Hecate’s blood is boiling now. The longer she dwells on that announcement—no, that ambush—the more the ire rises within her. What weakness, what inadequacy in those who claim power in this world! ‘If that was what you wanted, I would, obviously. If you wished to marry, we would do so this instant, and hang the Code. That is not the point.’

Pippa is strangely calm, smiling to herself, seems to think she’s won an argument. Seems to think that _is_ part of the point.

Hecate continues, hoping at least to rouse Pippa to some level of indignation: ‘this idea that you need a referendum to change the Code, anyway! Technically inaccurate, of course; anyone who’s spent even an afternoon studying the original manuscripts of the Code text realises that’s just a claim made by eighteenth-century literalists, a bare-faced lie made in order to freeze in time a document which was always meant to be flexible, a claim which has been unthinkingly accepted as historical truth…’

‘But we’ve agreed that you _would_ marry me.’

‘Pippa, you seem to be overlooking the fact that the Great Wizard has come to your school and has _outed_ you to a mob of undisciplined journalists and all their readers, and then made you—us—the figurehead in what is inevitably going to be a gruesome and prolonged campaign. All to maintain his grip on the council.’

(‘Outed’ is probably not fair though. Pippa thinks of the time spent out in the world together, beyond the protected walls of either Pentangle’s or Cackle’s. Times when Hecate has publicly, even sometimes a little defiantly, held her hand. Times when Hecate has let herself be dragged to the events that Pippa knows she hates but at which Pippa must put in an appearance. When Hecate has even gone to the trouble of memorising the names of donors to the school and little snippets about their lives, in order to make Pippa’s socialising easier. Admittedly, Hecate hasn’t quite mastered the art of feigning interest in the minutiae of their lives, but she has tried. The effort has been evident on her face every time she has tried not to let a grimace at an utterly uninspired line of conversation show. So, no, ‘outed’ is not accurate: you can’t reveal something which is already widely—if tacitly—acknowledged. For instance. Her old college tutor last week, saying he was glad at how happy she seemed at last. Or, leaving a working lunch with some colleagues from another school, who had made her promise to give their love to Hecate. They had probably overestimated Hecate’s tolerance for the unlooked-for love of strangers being poured out upon her, but Pippa appreciated the sentiment.)

But also, she reflects, Hecate Hardbroom’s fits of anger are something to behold. Volcanic. Majestic. She’s heard this one, the ‘eighteenth-century misrepresentations of the Code’ refrain before; but she still enjoys watching Hecate declaiming in full flow. Always has.

 

 

*

No, there is one situation even worse than being on that stage with the Great Wizard. Which is when she arrives back at Cackle’s, is walking down the corridor to the office, and Mildred Hubble rushes up to her, flings her arms around her waist and hugs her. Apparently having your romantic and political preferences disclosed for you at a press conference means that any authority and hauteur you have cultivated in the classroom instantly evaporates.

Mildred presents her with a little (tragically hand-made, slightly falling-apart) badge, depicting Pippa and her. The badge is in the shape of a heart (really?), and Mildred has magicked up the image herself; the two of them are just about recognisable. Well, that’s good, at least—because that slightly tricky image replication spell is on the end of year examination paper, and it seems that Mildred has remembered it. The girl is learning.

She could do without Mildred’s heartfelt declaration, which follows, and which HB has to fight against finding too touching.

‘We know we’re not qualified witches, so we won’t have a vote, Miss Hardbroom, but we want to go out and campaign for you! I made these badges, and Maud is going to work on a banner. And Enid is doing a weather charm, so when we take the banner out, it won’t get damaged by wind and rain.’

Campaign _for you_. As if she has to become the avatar for this ridiculous campaign. As if, despite Mildred, Maud and Enid’s best efforts, anyone will be convinced by a banner waved around by a trio of underage witches. And at the same time as Mildred, Maud and Enid are giving up their time for her sake (she feels affection creeping in again), then the same old types will be crawling out of the woodwork, poisoning the air with their accusations and implications and things not said.

All for the sake of something only intended to be a prop for a Great Wizard who needs to sure up his support at the more progressive end of the spectrum. Though what’s progressive about extending the basic rights which every witch and wizard should enjoy, Hecate is not sure. Her thoughts reel off again, angrier and angrier.

And still it gets worse. The hugging when she goes into the staffroom.

Miss Drill, Miss Bat, Miss Cackle—oh, everyone—is wearing one of Mildred’s badges.

Thank goodness no-one yet has called her brave. ‘Very brave, I thought’, says Mr Rowan-Webb, patting her on the shoulder. Apparently the Great Wizard’s announcement also meant that her usual prohibitions on physical contact and personal privacy have been abolished too. She fights the urge to snap her fingers and transfer herself to a part of the globe where they do not know her name and have yet to form an opinion about her marital status. She could do this; why she doesn’t actually do so is not quite clear to her.

She mirrors Pippa later, to complain. And to add some further thoughts on those eighteenth-century Code scholars. Pippa is proudly sporting her own badge on top of her robes. Hecate notes—a flash of jealousy, a flash of resignation—that the badges produced by the Pentangle’s students are considerably more professional than the Cackle’s versions. But when she offers this observation to Pippa, Pippa uses her very sternest voice and tells her to pin on the Mildred Hubble badge. Hecate complies.

 

 

*

Out of everything in this unpredictable day, this is the most predictable. Or at least the thing Hecate might have seen coming, and should have considered how to counteract: Ethel and Esmerelda seem to be having a fight about it. (‘It’ being the only thing which anyone in the school seems to be capable of talking about.) No small fight, in fact, from the way in which Ethel is huffing and Esmerelda’s face is blazing.

(Another great result from the work of the greatest of all wizards!)

It’s predictable that Ethel, desperate for their mother’s love, has taken in, swallowed, and now is parroting their Mrs Hallow’s line. Predictable too that in Mrs Hallow’s opinion, the old ways are the ways for a reason. That the framers of the Code wouldn’t have endorsed this. That magic is about a developing a fundamental unity with nature, not crossing it.

Esmerelda is disagreeing, but at the same time (Hecate recognises, with a little pang), she is trying to pretend she doesn’t have a horse in the race. So she’s angrily offering up a supposedly disinterested defence of ‘different’ witches and wizards.

This is why referendums are a bad idea. The squeeze they put on people.

Hecate doesn’t take Ethel’s opinion personally; it’s scarcely even the girl’s own. And by the standards of what she’s heard over the years (including things she’s thought about herself), Mrs Hallow’s talking points are childish, amateur insults. They bounce off the skin.

Of course, Mildred Hubble takes it upon herself to get into it with Ethel.

‘Don’t you want Miss Hardbroom to be happy, Ethel? Are you really _that_ horrible?’, she catches Mildred snapping at Ethel, when she walks into her classroom.

Ethel, pointedly, is the only student in the class not wearing a badge. Quite possibly she is the only person in the school who is not wearing one. There’s a gasp when Mildred asks that last question. A few students stand and applaud Mildred. Everyone else turns to look at Ethel. They look at her in the same way they looked at Mildred at the start of her time here—as if she didn’t belong. Ethel tries very hard (but very badly) to pretend she’s not about to burst into tears.

The joke is that Hecate might well have been happy before all this began. But she hadn’t wanted to curse herself by thinking about it too hard, as if the question might make her slip up. Thinking of that gap, somewhere between her reunion with Pippa and the Great Wizard inviting himself to Pentangle’s, she suspects that happiness might have been a good label for that interlude. Certainly she’d reached a kind of accommodation with herself—which didn’t quite amount to forgiveness of past failures, but an acknowledgment that her teenage self deserved a degree of compassion.

Well, of course, now—nearly two weeks since the great referendum announcement/public outing had been made—she simply considers ‘happier times’ to have been the times when she was able to get some teaching done. Those halcyon days, when every class wasn’t punctuated by a series of constitutional and irrelevant questions, speculation on unsupported polling data, or offensively personal interrogation (how is Miss Pentangle dealing with the situation?).

And of course she’d like the right to marry whoever she liked ( _if_ she liked; and ‘whoever’ only ever meant one person). But—the lesson that’s stuck with her all her life—she won’t do anything on other people’s terms. That’s her own code.

 

 

*

She relates the Ethel/Mildred debacle to Pippa, sitting on the couch, an entirely necessary bottle of a very old and fine wine from the Pentangle’s cellars having been almost drunk dry.

Hecate is turning over in her mind the question of whether she should be irritated by the fact that the Pentangle’s students now cheer and clap when they see her arriving in the grounds, or whether, in the grand scheme of irritants which currently crowd her life, she should choose to overlook this one.

Both of them have tried to work, but both have given up on it. Hecate meant to be completing a review of a book entitled ‘New Methodologies of the Craft’. It is almost two weeks overdue. But, infuriatingly, when she sent a message to apologise for the delay, the editor of the journal had immediately shot back that she understood and added that she appreciated the political struggle Hecate was waging. Hecate can’t remember with certainty at this moment, partly due to the clouding effects of half a bottle of wine, but she thinks the editor may even have signed off her message with the single word ‘Solidarity!’. With a capital letter and an exclamation mark. But she’s not waging anything; this has just been dumped upon her.

Pippa is meant to be writing an opinion piece for wizarding news, responding to a series of (really quite foul) claims made by the head of the No campaign. Hecate doesn’t see why Pippa should take the trouble to respond; Hecate doesn’t see why someone who throws around such slurs is still allowed to be considered a reputable member of the magical community with opinions worth considering. Pippa just says this is why _she_ is the one to write these things and Hecate must not. Mainly because the paper Hecate would write on would incinerate under the angry pressure of her pen.

When Hecate relates the Ethel story, Pippa smiles, indulgently, and continues twining Hecate’s hair around her fingers. ‘So you’re feeling sorry for the student who thinks that this’ (she kisses Hecate’s neck) ‘is an abomination?’

‘It’s more complicated than that. Ethel hardly knows what she thinks, she just wants to impress her mother. Like most girls of that age.’

‘Oh Hecate. You really are too soft sometimes.’

Hecate snorts. ‘Pippa Pentangle, you realise that you are the only person who has ever, or ever will, said that to me.’

‘I’m extremely perceptive. It’s why I’m a Superhead.’ And kisses her neck again.

 

 

*

Anyway, Ethel’s stance changes. Everyone else thinks it’s because of the way Mildred Hubble bravely confronted her in class. (This assumption only serves to burnish Mildred’s reputation in the eyes of her classmates; this whole debacle is not going to do anything for that particular relationship.) But Hecate suspects it is because of a quiet conservation which Ethel had with Esme one evening. Both looked slightly shaky afterwards. In their classes, Hecate makes a point at smiling at Ethel, praising her loudly when her spells come off. This is not because Ethel has changed her mind, but because she can guess how hard it must have been for Ethel to allow herself to change her mind, and to cast off what her mother had told her. As Hecate has always said: Ethel is a strong student, a clever girl, but sometimes rather blinkered, not imaginative. She is too willing to assume that power and right are the same thing. Well, it’s a common fault.

When things go wrong, of course it’s not the fault of Ethel, who doesn’t have the imagination to damage things this disastrously. Need it even be stated? It’s the fault of Mildred Hubble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun duuuuuun!
> 
> Hope you all loved this totally relaxing opportunity to escape from the definitely not infinitely depressing world of reality!
> 
> Tune in next time, when our heroes meet a bus. (What bus could that be?)


	7. Political Fixes, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The conclusion to the previous chapter. It's almost voting time.
> 
> A little bit of vengeance, a little bit of wish fulfilment, and a little bit of potion spilling.
> 
> (And a dogmatic insistence that 'referendums' not 'referenda' is the correct plural form.)

So this is how it ends.

With Hecate Hardbroom on stage, speaking to the world. Broadcasting to it, live.

Of the literally thousands of witches and wizards in the magical world who might have been picked to represent this category, who might have been selected to bear this special kind of torment, she is the last one standing.

Let’s say it once again: it is Mildred Hubble’s fault.

It began when the Great Wizard had breezily and unthinkingly signed up to a debate on the referendum question, assuming he’d wipe the floor with his opponents. Of course he’d be happy to stand on a wide stage and explain why he was waving the flag for equality and justice, why he had decided to be a friend to the legions of beaten-down witches and wizards!

The Great Wizard had failed, of course, to read the terms of the agreement he’d put his name to, which excluded him from participating in the debate. (The highest authority in the magical world shouldn’t be seen to take sides, and sling mud in a debate, even though everyone knows what vote he’s endorsing). But his advisors thought that might still work anyway, because, actually, now they think of it—let’s get someone on stage who has a personal interest in the question. The approachable Miss Pentangle made the ideal candidate.

Pippa had not jumped at it. But, in for a penny…, and they were already in. Besides, she had managed to come to an agreement with the Great Wizard’s office. In exchange for her participation (one debate, and one debate only), he’d nod through a few minor educational reforms. Pentangle’s would gain a bit more freedom over its curriculum in the future. There were one or two adjustments to do with salary structures, marking pressures and centralised boards. Pippa Pentangle had long ago learned that you don’t give away something for nothing (though the heart might be an exception to that rule).

Hecate had been nervous at the proposition. Why should Pippa be exposed to the full beam of what was certain to be vile thuggery? ‘It will be fine, it will be fine. Don’t fuss. What can they do to me onstage beyond call me a few names?’ Hecate had looked like she’d envisaged many answers to that question and wasn’t happy with any of the possible scenarios.

Miss Cackle had insisted on bringing the whole school to the auditorium where the debate is being held. If she hadn’t, she’d have a mutiny on her hands (but Miss Cackle was hardly going to miss this, anyway. It’s what she calls ‘showing support to her dearest friend’; it’s what Hecate calls ‘a nuisance and entirely unnecessary distraction from academic endeavours’). They could have watched quite comfortably from inside the school, once lessons were completed for the day. But instead it has been turned into a school trip. Adding a circus to a circus.

So the entire academy has been camped out here for the past couple of hours, waiting while the stage is set up, and for the arrival of the ‘other side’. It’s a party atmosphere. Mr Rowan-Webb long ago gave up trying to give a mini-lecture on the historical significance of the debate. He’s now just walking up and down the empty aisles, admiring the fifth year’s work as they practice producing signs for a rally to be held afterwards.

Mildred has left Enid and Maud gorging on some sugary products, keeping their attention levels up for later on in the evening. She doesn’t know quite how to feel. On one hand, it is always exciting to be not-in-school during the hours when you should be in school. On the other, that excitement is tempered by the fact that this is something that matters. It’s a bit like going off to fight Agatha and the whole fate of the school depending on it, but having a massive party beforehand. It’s wild and a bit frightening at the same time.

So, in a corner of the debate hall, Mildred had decided to put her nervous energy to good use by helpfully brewing up an Eloquence Enhancer. She’s old enough now to recognise that you do not drug witches without their permission, so she had decided to take it up to the room where Miss Pentangle was preparing and ask if she’d like a drop in her tea. A strange atmosphere of almost domestic calm pervaded the little anteroom. Miss Hardbroom was there, using some kind of charm to steam out the last creases from Miss Pentangle’s robe (although reminding Miss Pentangle that she can back out any time and that she really doesn’t have to do this. Not for a second.) Yep, HB is way more nervous than Miss Pentangle, Mildred thinks. But she’s trying to cover this up by providing steam and support. And Miss Pentangle, Mildred notes, looks remarkably composed—occasionally leafing through her notes to check a figure or two, but mostly just chatting and making jokes about what would be happening at the school in her absence, and commenting on HB’s ironing abilities.

Correction: a strange atmosphere of calm _had_ pervaded the room, past tense. Had, until Mildred had tripped over her own shoelaces, lost her grip and sent her special draught flying through the air and onto Miss Pentangle. Miss Pentangle is fine, absolutely fine—only a couple of drops spilled on her, and the potion had completely cooled, but uh oh, this probably isn’t great (even in the long list of Mildred’s magical accidents, it’s possibly one of the worst), because the potion seems to have rendered Miss Pentangle almost entirely hoarse. It turns out spilling the Eloquence Enhancer on the skin rather than taking it on the tongue has the effect of reversing its properties. Temporarily depriving the exposed party not just of elegant expression but of the power of speech entirely. (And, Mildred thinks, that is not even a funny, quirky little side effect! That should definitely have been in the textbook. Wait, had it been in the textbook?)

Mildred had expected HB to be absolutely livid. Because the only thing that could possibly infuriate HB more than failure to observe elementary potion stoppering practice, or spilling it on HB herself, was spilling a potion on Miss Pentangle. HB probably even gets angry at raindrops for falling on Miss Pentangle’s head. But after HB had checked Miss Pentangle for any further physical harm, she had just shaken her head, and said she supposed that they’d have to call off the debate.

Mildred had missed the next bit because she’d left the room to try to find where she had put that bottle stopper, and just in case HB’s reaction to the spill had taken a little while to kick in.

When some comes back in (curiosity won’t allow her to stand outside any longer), the first thing she hears is HB:

‘No, no, no, absolutely not. While I have reconciled myself to the fact that this referendum must happen, even allowing my face to be put on some promotional material—against my better judgment—that does not mean I agree to be trotted out like some relatable representative for the whole of my kind.’

‘Relatable might be pushing it’, observes one of the Great Wizard’s advisors. Who then quickly leaves the room.

Then Miss Drill (how is she here? When did she come in? Obviously everyone else is finding this scene just as compelling as Mildred) sidles up to Mildred and whispers to her, ‘now watch this’.

And Mildred does watch. It takes about 30 seconds for HB to be turned from ‘no, no, no, absolutely not’ to quiet acquiescence to the fact that she will be going on stage in just ten minutes. Even more remarkably, it’s done in total silence, without the use of Miss Pentangle’s vocal chords, just a few careful stares.

And Mildred’s mouth is sort of hanging open, not just because the ability to get HB to reverse positions entirely is something she’d sacrifice an arm or a leg to have in classes, but also because Mildred feels a bit stupid for ever thinking Miss Pentangle might have needed any eloquence potion at all.

‘Works even quicker when she’s not lost her voice’, Miss Drill adds, giving Mildred a wink.

 

 

*

Mildred wants to tell Maud and Enid the absolutely sensational news about what’s going to happen, wants to be the first to share this scoop with everyone, and to give them enough time to update their banner now that HB will be the one on stage, but she can’t find them.

Everyone has raced outside, because the Other Side have arrived.

The No campaign is funded and fronted by the Alliance for Traditional Witchcraft, who have spent the last ninety days promising that life will be brighter the moment that this dangerous initiative is rejected. ‘We’re not saying it’s wrong, just that it shouldn’t be encouraged’, says their spokeswitch for the ATW, primly, on repeat. ‘We believe in the social institutions of the magical world, believe that they should mean something’.

True to form, they do not arrive surreptitiously. They step off the bus (a flying bus, obviously—they’re not that traditional). And they’re handing out flyers which makes Maud purse her lips and say that she really thinks some of the claims on here ought to be checked.

Mildred takes a closer look at the flying bus. It has VOTE NO emblazoned on one side, and ‘THINK OF THE CHILDREN’ on the other. That’s weird, thinks Mildred, because she remembers reading that morning on Enid’s maglet (hers is broken, a minor accident with the screen and then a little dip in the pond for which she hasn’t yet been able to remember the correct repair spell) that 85% of young voters are in favour of a yes vote, rising to 90% among witches who haven’t yet qualified. So she’s not sure which children she’s meant to be thinking of. And what if some of those children grow up and realise they want to be married, and can’t be? Maybe the back of the bus has a further sentence painted on it which explains the slogan. She walks round but can’t see anything. If you’re going to go to the bother of pimping your bus, thinks Mildred, you should at least make it clear what your bus is promising.

 

 

*

Originally, Mrs Hallow was scheduled to have been on the stage as the advocate for the No side. It was to be her return to politics, part of a sensational comeback tour, her vindication. Until Ethel had decided on an intervention, arrived at home unannounced with both her sisters, and explained to her mother that she absolutely should not step onto that stage (or even, really, onto the bus). And when Mrs Hallow had rather impatiently demanded to know what Ethel was talking about, and why she was trying to thwart her mother’s return to the public eye, Ethel had stood her ground, frowned and said, with her usual acidity, ‘Why do you think, mum? Isn’t there one in every family?’

This had led to a situation where Mrs Hallow had been left trying to work out which of her three daughters she should be looking at. They still haven’t told her. So now Mrs Hallow is taking some time to rethink her position.

 

 

*

‘Well, really. Must I even dignify that with a response?’ She rolls her eyes. And Pippa breathes out, slightly relieved, because this debate has now been going for five minutes and the only violence which Hecate has unleashed has been verbal.

And Mildred and Maud and Enid are also breathing out sighs of relief in unison, as they stand somewhere near the front of the crowd, because HB’s answers…seem to be working?

Who knows what the rest of magical world is thinking as they watch this, but it’s certainly putting the ATW lady off her stroke. The chosen representative of the No side had been expecting an argument, or a series of talking points to pick apart. She’d not been expecting this, hadn’t practiced for….what is essentially a potions class. Yep, that’s definitely what it is, thinks Mildred, as she watches HB tut and shake her head at her opponent’s muddled attempt to talk about family values. Because how do you even reply to HB when she's operating in this mode? Mildred knows from experience that you don’t—you just look down quietly at your notes and try to work out where you got the spell wrong. The ATW lady stops yammering on about ‘dangerous lifestyles’ and sort of slows down and gets quieter, like a wind-up toy running out of energy.

And the all black look? Really working. Imposing, but straightforward. The Alliance for Traditional Witchcraft have played that all wrong too; trying to look casual and friendly and ‘hip’, but have landed about twenty years off current magical fashions.

The strangest thing of all: HB hasn’t even prepared for this. She’s just eerily good at arguing with someone on a public stage. She’s naturally dramatic and naturally cool (and no, Mildred doesn’t know how that even begins to compute. But this is a strange day, even by the standards of someone who basically tricked their way into a school of magic).

Esme Hallow, President of HBAS and Proud (and wearing a large badge declaring I’M VOTING YES) is somewhere in the crowd and beaming approval onto the stage. She’s also muttering a levitation spell at the same time, so Sybil can float high enough to get a good view of the action over the heads of the students in front of her.

What Pippa Pentangle is now thinking is how incredibly stimulating she is finding this whole spectacle. Which she perhaps should have anticipated; there has always been something rather amatory about listening to Hecate’s regular tirades. Pulsating with anger and injustice, there’s a charisma to her outrage. How unfortunate (though probably safer) that Pippa isn’t physically capable of articulating this desire at the moment. Safer while there are cameras around.

Eventually, when the students all get back to Cackle’s (very, very late that night), a second debate will begin. A debate about the debate. Specifically: what was your favourite part, what was the best bit? Opinion is split, and vehemently so. Was the high point of the evening when HB said ‘let’s begin with eleven reasons why that last claim was wildly biologically and socially inaccurate’, and then clicked her fingers, summoned a blackboard and ran through eleven incontrovertible bullet points? Or was the best bit when she cocked her head to one side and stayed silent for a moment, and the moderator had intervened and asked her if she was ok. ‘Perfectly well’, she had responded. ‘I’m just trying to discern whether or not there was a question in that jumble of bluster and mangled syntax.’ She had grimaced, and shaken her head, ‘No, I don’t think so’.

Mildred has been on the receiving end of that headshake a thousand times, and this is the first time she’s enjoyed seeing it.

 

 

*

While the moderator is wrapping up, Mildred creeps up to the side of stage. It’s easy, because all eyes (loving, admiring, awed) are on Miss Hardbroom. Finally, when the hour is over, Miss Hardbroom steps down. On the other side of the stage, her opponent clambers towards to her supporters, looking sodden with sweat, and slightly horrified. Before speaking to anyone, Miss Hardbroom picks an undetectable speck of dust off her (bone-dry) sleeve. Miss Cackle is the first to come up to her, and pats her on the shoulder, and opens her mouth to say something extremely encouraging about her performance and how the whole school is proud of her. (Mildred thinks that would be underselling it a bit; this is probably the greatest thing which has ever happened in the history of the school and they’re not even in school.)

HB gets there first. ‘Do not tell me how that went; I do not wish to know.’

Then she turns to Miss Pentangle. ‘I will never, ever do that again. Not even for you.’

Luckily for the sake of HB’s equanimity, they’re only planning on the one referendum.

(But also Mildred suspects that HB would do it again if Miss Pentangle asked her to.)

 

 

*

As it turns out, only one referendum is required.

They all stay up to watch the results come in, on a big screen that Miss Cackle has conjured in the grounds of the Academy. And the vote is overwhelming (overwhelming in other ways too), which prompts HB to remark to Miss Pentangle, who has brought all the Pentangle’s students over with her too, that she needn’t have done that ridiculous debate at all. They could have sent a bat on stage for all the convincing that needed to be done. And that prompts a discussion.

Hecate wonders whether Miss Cackle should say something at this point, say something to make sure the result doesn’t go to their heads. Someone should let the students know that this kind of giddy success is the exception, not the rule. Most of the time—young people should learn this, learn it early—most of the time the good does not triumph. Not every political experience of their lifetime will be a victory; in fact, hardly any of them will be. And even with those that are, each advance will need to be guarded and protected, lest it should slip back without even being noticed. They will be fighting against a tide that’s always trying to wash back in again. Miss Pentangle, whose arms are locked round HB’s waist, shakes her head indulgently, tells her not to be so gloomy. Sometimes things work out for the best.

But Miss Cackle doesn’t need to introduce some solemnity or a note of warning, because then something happens to bring the whole party down. A representative of the defeated No campaign is interviewed on the screen, and proclaims that this night, this euphoria, is ‘only a temporary setback, and our alliance will continue to work to protect traditional values’. And that gives everyone a strange feeling, as if apparently happiness doesn’t count as a value. And they’d all quite like the ATW to scuttle off now, back to whatever dark corner they emerged from, but the speaker is sticking to the screen and saying more things. Mildred is looking around for Maud and Enid, and they look, like her, as if they don’t know what the response to this should be; because they thought it was over, but apparently it’s not? And it’s all getting a bit solemn, and it feels like the night air is getting colder and the charms are wearing off, when, suddenly, fortuitously, Esme Hallow stumbles into the party, kissing a girl who Mildred thinks she sort of half-recognises, possibly from Pentangle’s, possibly from the night of the debate, and everyone lets out a cheer. And Esme looks a bit embarrassed, but not really, mostly just pleased with herself. And as Head Girl it’s her job to keep up morale anyway, so—job done.

And just to one side of the party, Mildred can see that the discussion is still going on. Basically, to summarise, Miss Pentangle keeps trying to get HB to relax. And HB sort of relaxes, in her own extremely tense way.

And Pippa smiles and says, ‘Hecate, I think you worry too much’.

And Hecate responds, ‘That’s strange. I was just thinking that I don’t worry _enough_.’

Pippa thinks for a moment, and wonders how much of their relationship they’ve managed to summarise in two sentences. Pippa asks, ‘would you like to have an argument over what you think is the appropriate amount of worry for a situation such as this?’

Hecate thinks about that for a minute, and then decides best not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WITCHES: they know how to get out the vote!
> 
> Thanks to everyone who read this far! I really appreciate you sticking with it, and the comments along the way. And apologies for all spelling errors and out-of-character actions.
> 
> *clicks fingers, transfers self*


End file.
